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The most dramatic proof of our current climate catastrophe ever caught on camera

It was the largest such event ever filmed.

Exposure Labs

A sheet of ice the size of Manhattan tumbled into the sea.

Photographer James Balog and his crew were hanging out near a glacier when their camera captured something extraordinary. They were in Greenland, gathering footage from the time-lapse they'd positioned all around the Arctic Circle for the last several years.

They were also there to shoot scenes for a documentary. And while they were hoping to capture some cool moments on camera, no one expected a huge chunk of a glacier to snap clean off and slide into the ocean right in front of their eyes.


science, calving, glaciers, climate changeA glacier falls into the sea.Exposure Labs

ocean swells, sea level, erosion, going greenMassive swells created by large chunks of glacier falling away.Exposure Labs

It was the glacier calving event ever filmed.

For nearly an hour and 15 minutes, Balog and his crew stood by and watched as a piece of ice the size of lower Manhattan — but with ice-equivalent buildings that were two to three times taller than that — simply melted away.

geological catastrophe, earth, glacier meltA representation demonstrating the massive size of ice that broke off into the sea.Exposure Labs

As far as anyone knows, this was an unprecedented geological catastrophe, and they caught the entire thing on tape. It won't be the last time something like this happens either.

But once upon a time, Balog was openly skeptical about that "global warming" thing.

Balog had a reputation since the early 1980s as a conservationist and environmental photographer. And for nearly 20 years, he'd scoffed at the climate change heralds shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

"I didn't think that humans were capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet. It didn't seem probable, it didn't seem possible," he explained in the 2012 documentary film "Chasing Ice."

There was too much margin of error in the computer simulations, too many other pressing problems to address about our beautiful planet. As far as he was concerned, these melodramatic doomsayers were distracting from the real issues.

That was then.

Greenland, Antarctica, glacier calvingThe glacier ice continues to erode away.Exposure Labs

In fact, it wasn't until 2005 that Balog became a believer.

He was sent on a photo expedition of the Arctic by National Geographic, and that first northern trip was more than enough to see the damage for himself.

"It was about actual tangible physical evidence that was preserved in the ice cores of Greenland and Antarctica," he said in a 2012 interview with ThinkProgress. "That was really the smoking gun showing how far outside normal, natural variation the world has become. And that's when I started to really get the message that this was something consequential and serious and needed to be dealt with."

Some of that evidence may have been the fact that more Arctic landmass has melted away in the last 20 years than the previous 10,000 years.

Watch the video of the event of the glacier calving below:

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Balog has continued documenting changes in the Earth's seas, ice sheets, and other environmental indicators of climate change and spoke with CBS about his work in 2024. "When I started the extreme ice survey, climate change was still seen as a pretty abstract thing," Balog said. "It was something that was going to happen 20 or 30 or 50 years from now and my god when you could start to realize no, it's happening right now right in front of us. It put a real marker in time to say this is now, this is real."

Balog hopes that his photographic record will serve as a record of the present and a message to the future.

"I want to be able to say to those people of the distant future look not everybody in this time in you know 2024 was terribly conscious or cared about climate change," he said, "but I want to be able to say that this mind, these eyes, and this heart was paying attention."

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

This article originally appeared 10 years ago and has been updated.

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Innovation

This organization is revolutionizing food supply chains to minimize waste

Spoiler Alert pairs CPG manufacturers with discount retailers to keep food out of landfills

Members of the Spoiler Alert team volunteer at Waltham Fields Community Farm in Waltham, MA

Nearly 120 billion pounds of food go to waste in the U.S. each year. This waste not only contributes to food insecurity, which millions of Americans are impacted by, but also has a detrimental impact on our climate. In large part, this comes down to a misallocation of resources.

We need to bridge the gap between food waste, the planet, and those in need. By doing so, we can drive sustainable food systems and get food to those who need it most. In fact, Project Drawdown has found that reducing food waste is the number one most impactful solution to climate change.

The foundations of Spoiler Alert were laid during my time at MIT Sloan in 2013 when I met my soon-to-be co-founder Emily Malina. With my consulting experience with brands and retailers on carbon, water, energy and waste initiatives and Emily’s background in supply chain transformation and technology adoption, we knew there was a supply chain solution that could help businesses better manage their food waste. That’s when we started Spoiler Alert.

Ricky Ashenfelter & Emily Malina, Co-founders of Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert is a B2B waste prevention software that helps CPG brands better manage excess and short dated inventory. This inventory arises from various sources, whether that’s overproduction, unsuccessful innovations, seasonal items, or promotional packaging.

We’ve built a sales and supply chain platform that provides manufacturers with the workflows, pricing intelligence, and networking tools to effectively discount this excess inventory that they’re not able sell to their normal everyday customers and prevent unnecessary waste.

Years later, we’re proud to be working with some of the largest brands in the world like Campbell Soup Company, Danone North America, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, and Kraft Heinz, and to have a team that’s as mission-driven and excited about our work as we are. Spoiler Alert’s commitment to its mission goes beyond software solutions. We’re a remote-first company that cares deeply about DEI, impact, and giving back to our local communities. We hold quarterly volunteer days that connect back to our work on food waste, and we’re proud members of Pledge 1%.

In 2022 alone, our platform helped manufacturers sell 325 million pounds of food that would otherwise have gone unsold. That’s the equivalent impact of 270 million meals, or taking almost 13,000 cars off the road for a year.

Today, we’re focused on continuing to connect with new brands to help optimize their supply chains. But we’re also seeing how impactful these same process improvements can be for items outside of food, like health and beauty care, which still have expiration dates and are at risk of going to waste.

Along with our dedicated customers, we're on a mission to make an impact on processes, people, and the planet.

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Planet

Ammonia will ​​play a major role in fighting climate change

The emission-free fuel is key to decarbonizing maritime shipping. Here’s why.

Amogy CEO, Seonghoon Woo, with the tugboat that is being retrofitted with Amogy’s ammonia-powered technology

The world economy runs on maritime shipping. More than 80% of international goods by volume are transported by ships, which together weave the essential fabric of the global supply chain.

But all of that shipping comes at a high cost to the climate: Right now, every ship is powered by carbon-emitting fuel, which means maritime shipping is responsible for an estimated 3 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions. Curbing those emissions as soon as possible—and fully decarbonizing the industry as a whole—is an important piece of the worldwide project to fight climate change and reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Just to get on track, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has concluded that international shipping emissions must remain steady through 2025, then decline by three percent annually until the end of the decade. And the average lifespan of a shipping vessel is 25 years, which means that ships built from 2025 onward will need to run on zero-emission fuel or be powered by engines that are convertible to zero-emission fuel.

We need to build ships that can run on zero-emission fuel, we need to build them as soon as possible, and we need to scale up the production of fuel that will keep those ships running efficiently.

Today’s industry standard is bunker fuel, also known as heavy fuel oil (HFO), because it has a high energy density and it is easily and efficiently transported. Both of those characteristics will be necessary for any fuel source that powers zero-emission maritime shipping. Unfortunately, batteries don’t offer enough energy density to compete with bunker fuel in most situations, and the hydrogen that powers fuel cells is expensive and difficult to transport in liquid form. While methanol offers both high energy density and efficient transportation, it still has carbon intensity and the production of green methanol is not cost-effective.

That’s where ammonia will make a difference. While batteries, liquid hydrogen, and methanol will all play significant roles in reaching Net Zero 2050, ammonia is the most promising affordable, zero-emission fuel. Ammonia is three times more energy dense than hydrogen, making it a clean and efficient solution that’s also easier and faster than battery charging without the size and weight constraints. The production of green ammonia is scalable and cost-effective, sufficient to provide hundreds of million tons of affordable fuels.

At Amogy, we’ve pioneered an ammonia-to-power technology that uses its unique properties as a carrier for hydrogen. The key is a process called “cracking,” which converts ammonia into hydrogen. By combining our cracking system with hydrogen fuel cell technology, it is possible to use ammonia as fuel without any combustion or carbon emissions.

Maritime shipping is a gigantic industry. Ammonia-to-power technology must develop concurrently with increased production of blue and green ammonia, supported by public policy encouraging both. And ammonia is just one piece of the Net Zero 2050 mission to fight climate change.

But the technology exists to make it happen. At Amogy, we’re using it to retrofit a tugboat into the world’s first ammonia-powered, zero-emission ship. By acting urgently—by taking the steps now that will speed the transition to carbon-free shipping tomorrow—we can transform that knowledge into real progress for our decarbonized future.

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Sustainability

A new material made from seaweed will transform the entire textile industry

Kelsun™, Keel Labs’ flagship product, is combating textile waste and turning the fashion industry (and potentially beyond) into a more sustainable economy.

Fashion is one of the planet’s biggest polluters – up to twenty one billion tonnes of textiles and materials end up in landfills every year, accounting for up to 10% of global CO2 emissions.

As a designer working in fashion and seeing first-hand the amount of waste and pollution generated by the industry, I recognized that the materials throughout our most fundamental items were simply too harmful to reconcile. Rather than continuing to contribute to the problem, I set out to make a change, starting with the building blocks of garments: fibers, yarns, and textiles.

My co-founder, Aleks Gosiewski and I founded Keel Labs with a mission to harness the radical potential of our oceans to positively impact the fashion industry and the world. The actualization of this mission is steadfastly rooted in our belief that we can transform our planetary health by combining material science and design thinking in collaboration with nature.

Our flagship product is a yarn called Kelsun™ made from abundant polymers found in kelp. By connecting planet-positive resources with the existing textile supply chain, we are able to help brands transform their models into the circular economy.

Because seaweed is vertically farmed in the ocean, sequesters carbon at a rapid rate, and is one of the most regenerative organisms on the planet, Kelsun™ has a lower environmental footprint than conventional fibers currently available on the market.

Kelsun™ also bypasses the environmental detriments of conventional yarn production. With a production process that uses no harmful chemicals, minimal water, and does not create toxic by-products, the result is a cleaner manufacturing process for people and the planet. Furthermore, Kelsun’s production is a drop-in solution for existing yarn and textile production infrastructure—enabling vast potential for scale.

As a collective of scientists, designers, and innovators who are fighting against material waste, we are building a healthy relationship between nature and the human ecosystems.

By using seaweed, which is not only a renewable source but also carbon sequestering, we are changing the textile ecosystem and creating a more sustainable and circular future.

Tessa Callaghan is a guest contributor to Upworthy and co-founder and CEO of Keel Labs.

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